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November’s law legalizing recreational weed has added a new set of challenges for regulation

Marijuana for medical use has been legal in California since 1996, but efforts to regulate it like a normal product have been elusive.

For nearly two decades the production, distribution, sale and taxation of cannabis has operated through a patchwork of local rules that can differ from one city or county to the next. What one grower or pot dispensary does in one part of the state could be illegal in another, from the number of plants producers can grow to whether or not cannabis-based edibles require warning labels.

Now that voters have approved the sale of marijuana for recreational use through November’s Proposition 64 referendum, officials involved with working out regulations are scrambling. They must establish statewide rules before the start of next year, when licenses are supposed to become available for the sale of recreational-use marijuana.

Some are doubtful that state policymakers will have everything in order by then.

“They can’t get it together about what they want the laws to be,” Alicia Darrow, chief operations manager of Blum Oakland, a 13-year-old Bay Area medical marijuana dispensary, told Salon. “I’ll be shocked if it goes live in 2018.”

The problem, she said, is that Prop. 64 threw a wrench into regulators’ efforts that began in October 2015 after the passage of Assembly Bill 266, the state’s first successful attempt to pass a law regulating medical marijuana.

Prop. 64 and AB 266 have considerable differences in the way marijuana is regulated that must be worked out. For example, AB 266 requires a small number of third-party companies to control distribution and oversee testing for pesticide contamination, something dispensaries argue is unnecessary and would increase costs. Another unanswered question pertains to how dispensaries that sell medical-use marijuana and the more heavily taxed recreational-use weed will be required to track and manage their inventories and sales. Under Prop. 64, dispensaries must have two separate inventories and tracking systems.

“It’s a big job, but we’re working hard and have every intention of meeting our goals,” Alex Traverso, a spokesman for the state’s Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation, said in an email to Salon. “The work we’ve done on regulations for medical cannabis have given us a great start.”

Meanwhile established growers, many of them mom-and-pop operations, are worried about being muscled out by bigger, well-financed ventures backed by deep-pocketed investment groups that are chasing the potential for big gains in the years to come. California’s medical marijuana business generated nearly $2.7 billion in sales in 2015 and that’s expected to balloon to $6.45 billion annually by 2020, including sales from recreational-use marijuana, according to cannabis industry investment network Arcview.

In the race to capitalize on America’s expanding legal cannabis industry, launch parties to premiere celebrity pot products have become de rigueur. Last November, Snoop Dogg debuted his Leafs by Snoop line at a Denver soiree, and on Feb. 6, which would have been Bob Marley’s 71st birthday, his son Rohan was in Los Angeles, where a high-end party launched Marley Natural strains and concentrates, now available at several SoCal med shops.

It’s just the tip of the celeb-pot iceberg. Tommy Chong’s Choice brand of buds began circulating in Washington State adult-use stores in January; a day after the Marley Natural bash, Chong was at the High Times SoCal Medical Cannabis Cup in San Bernardino promoting the new brand with an arcade-style crane machine filled with fat green nugs.

Just a week earlier, it was Wiz Khalifa’s turn to let the world know that he, too, is making a Green Rush move with his Khalifa Kush strain and other products to be grown and sold in RiverRock’s two Denver locations. In a press release, Khalifa stated: “These products have taken years to perfect. I’m really excited to share them with the public and to work with RiverRock to raise awareness and end marijuana prohibition nationwide.”

Khalifa has also extended his existing partnership with RAW to include new versions of his branded Khalifa cones and papers, and other merchandise. “He just really, really liked RAW ,” the company’s Founding Director, Joshua Kesselman, tells Freedom Leaf. “The relationship grew until one day it was time to turn it into an actual joint venture.”

Partnerships abound in the brave new world of legal cannabis. The Marley family has partnered with Privateer Holdings; and Willie Nelson has received investment support from Tuatara Capital for his Willie’s Reserve product line, which launched over the sumer on Colorado and Washington State

Singer Melissa Etheridge is also getting into the cannabiz with her private-label, weed-infused red wine, created for Greenway Cannabis Relief in Santa Cruz, Calif. by Lisa Molyneux (see Freedom Leaf Issue 5); the bottles are currently only available to members of the medical marijuana collective. At the Women Grow Summit in Denver in February, Etheridge told the crowd: “It’s time for us to run that business with the knowledge of health and wellness, and also the other energy of capitalism. We’ll show that it can work.”

Just this month, Etheridge announced that she would be starting Etheridge Farms, her own brand cannabis products, including topicals, edibles and flowers. The same goes for Whoopi Goldberg, who’s line, Whoopi and Maya caters especially to women. And Montel Williams’ LenitivLabs will focus on extracts and new delivery systems.

Several celebs are looking to get in on the retail cannabis boom. As we reported in Issue 11 (“Pot Shop Owner B-Real Talks Medical Marijuana”), rapper B-Real won a license in 2015 to open a shop in Santa Ana, Calif. He’ll be competing with Roseanne Barr, who’s invested in another Santa Ana store. However, in Hawaii, noted actor and hempster Woody Harrelson was rejected when he applied for a license to operate two dispensaries and two cultivation facilities on Oahu.